It's no surprise, really. It takes a certain sort of discipline to sit down and read like in the old days before there was all of this digital entertainment and interaction available.

I seriously worry about this with regards to my own brain - being a professor/researcher and all. I can do it when I force myself to but it's harder than it used to be.

I really worry about this when it comes to the future of humanity. If people lose the ability to do deep contemplative uninterrupted thinking, I think it could have terrible consequences - no snark here.

It's no surprise, really. It takes a certain sort of discipline to sit down and read like in the old days before there was all of this digital entertainment and interaction available.

I seriously worry about this with regards to my own brain - being a professor/researcher and all. I can do it when I force myself to but it's harder than it used to be.

Make it a habit.

I read books still. I stopped reading fiction, for the most part, but I keep my brain active by doing things the hard way intentionally. That's not to say I don't do mindless entertainment, of course, but my head isn't always stuck at an electronic screen.

Even as a child I remember reading books then suddenly being conscious of the fact that for the last few paragraphs I've let my mind wander whilst my eyes continued moving forward, and had to go back and re-read parts. I don't think the internet is to blame for that.

Slaxl:Even as a child I remember reading books then suddenly being conscious of the fact that for the last few paragraphs I've let my mind wander whilst my eyes continued moving forward, and had to go back and re-read parts. I don't think the internet is to blame for that.

Heh. When I read when I'm sleepy, often times I'll sort of "snap back" and re-read what I had just read, and often I'm surprised to find that my mind "filled in the blanks" with something completely different than what is on the page.

I don't think we need the focus on recall that we used to - technology has improved to the point that it is far, far more useful to know how to get information than it is to recall all of it.

It is analogous to memorizing multiplication or integrals tables - sure, you know it when you know it, but when it doesn't fit into the set of knowledge you have memorized, what then? OTOH, if you memorize a handful of rules or steps for figuring out the answer, you can handle complex problems beyond those anticipated by the creators of the tables.

It's no surprise, really. It takes a certain sort of discipline to sit down and read like in the old days before there was all of this digital entertainment and interaction available.

I seriously worry about this with regards to my own brain - being a professor/researcher and all. I can do it when I force myself to but it's harder than it used to be.

Make it a habit.

I read books still. I stopped reading fiction, for the most part, but I keep my brain active by doing things the hard way intentionally. That's not to say I don't do mindless entertainment, of course, but my head isn't always stuck at an electronic screen.

This, also, visual reading (vs linear) I think is the future. It should be taught to everyone in school as soon as they're able. There's just so much more information to process now, you can't get it all line by line (and of course you don't need to process everything with the same degree of depth either).

It's no surprise, really. It takes a certain sort of discipline to sit down and read like in the old days before there was all of this digital entertainment and interaction available.

I seriously worry about this with regards to my own brain - being a professor/researcher and all. I can do it when I force myself to but it's harder than it used to be.

I really worry about this when it comes to the future of humanity. If people lose the ability to do deep contemplative uninterrupted thinking, I think it could have terrible consequences - no snark here.

I dunno. There's a lot of evidence that folks - esp. scholars - had better memories prior to the invention of the printing press. I think the trade-off was worth it.

/My concern is that it is difficult to find a quiet space to engage in serious contemplation. Even libraries are no longer quiet zones.

b0rscht:I really worry about this when it comes to the future of humanity. If people lose the ability to do deep contemplative uninterrupted thinking, I think it could have terrible consequences - no snark here.

You do realize that for the great part of written human existence the overwhelming majority of people didn't read at all, right? And that reading was still pretty rare 200 years ago. Hell, it was only about a hundred years or so ago that you could start to make the assumption that anyone you met could read as a matter of course. Yet we managed to not only not run around banging rocks together, but crank out both written culture and technological advancements. And even then, most people read complete schlock. The penniless bootblack in 1812 doing a close reading of Aristotle in the original Greek is a fable. The inner city child in 1956 reading Proust for fun is a fable. And yet we built pretty much all of human society and technology with the great teeming masses either illiterate or consuming a steady diet of Doc Sampson pulp. Researchers and bibliovores have always been the exception.

"Oh noes! We will have the reading habits of 1950s Americans!" is hardly the beginning of humanity fading into mentally retarded barbarity.

Not to mention, most writers are long-winded thesaurus-jockeys. Making them cut the crap and spit out what they mean in 100 pages is not always a bad thing. A good copy editor could have winnowed down most 1800s non-fiction tomes by a good third just by cutting the useless frippery - and most 1600s stuff could have easily be reduced to a single double-spaced page without losing one iota of meaning.

"This alternative way of reading is competing with traditional deep reading circuitry developed over several millennia."

That's BS. If you go back 5 generations or more, I am sure most of our ancestors didn't know how to read or write. The ability to read has had negligible influence in our brain's evolution, it's a skill that we learned very recently.

Yeah, sitting down to read a book is something I haven't done in a LONG time now that I think about it. I was a regular bookworm camped out in the Library back in high school, 10 years later and I struggle to read even a single book a year.

ph0rk:I don't think we need the focus on recall that we used to - technology has improved to the point that it is far, far more useful to know how to get information than it is to recall all of it.

It is analogous to memorizing multiplication or integrals tables - sure, you know it when you know it, but when it doesn't fit into the set of knowledge you have memorized, what then? OTOH, if you memorize a handful of rules or steps for figuring out the answer, you can handle complex problems beyond those anticipated by the creators of the tables.

So, in short, just use Google.

^^This. I have found for years that my brain doesn't function in a memorize/recall way. However, I can compile a huge swath of small pieces of information into one logical conclusion. Came in hella handy when I was putting together databases and trying to automate office processes.

My short-term memory is awesome and I'd say my cognitive function is a-ok. My long-term memory sucks and I have virtually no ability to develop an idea deeply. As a counter-point: most of the ideas I spout out after 3 seconds of thought most people think I've spent days thinking about. However, it never gets any deeper.

It's not from the Internet, assholes. It's from being taught skimming in school for YEARS. I noticed this was an issue years before I used the internet with any real frequency. Schools focused on teaching you to skim so that you could get through a reading project faster well before Al Gore invented this internet thingy.

Mikey1969:It's not from the Internet, assholes. It's from being taught skimming in school for YEARS. I noticed this was an issue years before I used the internet with any real frequency. Schools focused on teaching you to skim so that you could get through a reading project faster well before Al Gore invented this internet thingy.

Yeah, I mean, if you can get the information you need from a book or article from skimming it, what's the problem? Are you telling me I was *supposed* to read every book and academic article I used in my undergrad research from beginning to end? Aw, hell no.

It's no surprise, really. It takes a certain sort of discipline to sit down and read like in the old days before there was all of this digital entertainment and interaction available.

I seriously worry about this with regards to my own brain - being a professor/researcher and all. I can do it when I force myself to but it's harder than it used to be.

I really worry about this when it comes to the future of humanity. If people lose the ability to do deep contemplative uninterrupted thinking, I think it could have terrible consequences - no snark here.

I dunno. There's a lot of evidence that folks - esp. scholars - had better memories prior to the invention of the printing press. I think the trade-off was worth it.

/My concern is that it is difficult to find a quiet space to engage in serious contemplation. Even libraries are no longer quiet zones.

The second floor of my public library is silent, which is glorious. I always feel bad practicing my mandocello up there, but it's the only place in town where I can hear it just right. And by just right, I mean with the background noise of six librarians trying to free their legs from being zip-tied to their chairs.

mike_d85:ph0rk: I don't think we need the focus on recall that we used to - technology has improved to the point that it is far, far more useful to know how to get information than it is to recall all of it.

It is analogous to memorizing multiplication or integrals tables - sure, you know it when you know it, but when it doesn't fit into the set of knowledge you have memorized, what then? OTOH, if you memorize a handful of rules or steps for figuring out the answer, you can handle complex problems beyond those anticipated by the creators of the tables.

So, in short, just use Google.

^^This. I have found for years that my brain doesn't function in a memorize/recall way. However, I can compile a huge swath of small pieces of information into one logical conclusion. Came in hella handy when I was putting together databases and trying to automate office processes.

My short-term memory is awesome and I'd say my cognitive function is a-ok. My long-term memory sucks and I have virtually no ability to develop an idea deeply. As a counter-point: most of the ideas I spout out after 3 seconds of thought most people think I've spent days thinking about. However, it never gets any deeper.

Needlessly Complicated:Mikey1969: It's not from the Internet, assholes. It's from being taught skimming in school for YEARS. I noticed this was an issue years before I used the internet with any real frequency. Schools focused on teaching you to skim so that you could get through a reading project faster well before Al Gore invented this internet thingy.

Yeah, I mean, if you can get the information you need from a book or article from skimming it, what's the problem? Are you telling me I was *supposed* to read every book and academic article I used in my undergrad research from beginning to end? Aw, hell no.

Well, it is the reason for the issue pointed out in TFA.

When reading a fiction book, though, you miss a lot. The problem is that they are addressing the wrong source. I think the internet does nothing more than enhance what you've already learned.